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Fran works as a project manager for a marketing company, and she is responsible to secure new clients and then manage their projects to completion. Today we find Fran finishing a conversation with one of her clients. “Yes, Marge, I will do my very best to have that ready by tomorrow. Uh-huh, yes, I understand. Okay, Marge, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Fran hangs up the phone and begins talking to herself, forgetting for a moment that Jesus, of course, hears everything she says or thinks.
“I don’t believe that woman. She is going to drive me nuts! Nothing we do is good enough for her. She makes last minute changes and then expects me to work miracles. And she is so rude. I really can’t stand her!”
Quietly she can sense the Spirit of God whispering to her: “Did you ever think that I love her as much as I love you?”
The thought startles her. “Well, yeah sure I knew that,” she thinks out loud. “You love everybody, Lord. But she’s a really nasty, demanding person. I’m sorry; I just don’t like her.”
As these thoughts continue, her mind goes back to a recent sermon she heard where her pastor said that there were people Jesus didn’t like, but he loved everybody. He had said that you don’t have to like everybody, but our commandment is to show God’s love to everybody.
“I thought you have to like someone, then you can love them,” Fran says to herself, “but I guess that’s not the way it is with God. The problem is, I just don’t know how to do it. There’s just no way I can love Marge. She’s obnoxious!”
“Do you want to love her?” again that quiet voice of Jesus catches her up short.
“Do I really want to love her? Tell you the truth—not really,” Fran admits. “I guess that’s where my problem lies, isn’t it Lord? But how can I even want to love someone like her?” Fran exclaims.
As she sits and thinks about that, Jesus says to her, “You can want to love her simply because you want to please me. I can help you love her. Why don’t you begin by praying for Marge every day?”
“Pray for Marge every day?” Fran repeats. “Really—will that make a difference?”
Jesus says, “It will make a difference in you, and that’s what is important.”
So, Fran determines to pray for Marge as Jesus has challenged her. Now she begins to do the work she promised Marge tomorrow, working diligently to get it perfect, because Marge is very demanding.
The next morning Fran is driving to work and praying for a lot of people, as she often does, and Marge comes to mind.
“I’d like to pray that lightning will strike her,” Fran says with a grin, knowing she halfway means it. But she attempts to pray for her, “Dear Lord, please help Marge to see how obnoxious she is and change the way she treats me.” Her prayer bounces off the car ceiling; she knows it’s the wrong prayer.
“Pray that Marge will change?” Jesus says to her. “That’s not exactly how you should pray for her, Fran.”
“But Lord, she should change. Her behavior is awful,” Fran defends herself.
Her spirit is uneasy. Somehow, she has to get beyond this selfish kind of praying, even though Marge is difficult. She can’t change Marge; she can only change herself.
“Well, what should I pray?” Fran finally asks.
And then she thought of something she heard on the radio—praying that she could see Marge the way God sees her. Praying for a new frame for Marge, a new way to see her, by putting her in a different frame.
“Put her in a different frame,” Fran thinks. “I guess I can do that, but she really is obnoxious.” As she drives along, she thinks about that further. “I guess I’ve had her in the obnoxious frame too long. Maybe I should pray for a new frame for Marge—a new way to look at her.”
So, even though she feels a little foolish and not totally sincere, in obedience Fran starts her prayer again: “Dear Lord, please help me to see Marge the way you do. And please give me a new frame to put her in. There’s got to be something good about her, Lord. Please show me what that is.”
As she arrives at work, she is under a great deal of pressure to get this job completed for Marge, as she promised yesterday. There’s no time for lunch, so she stops at the vending machine for some crackers to munch on at her desk. When she returns there is a voice mail message from Marge, demanding an immediate call back. “Even her telephone messages are intimidating,” Fran says, and she dreads having to call her back. But she starts to make the call.
“Pray first,” Jesus quietly says to Fran.
She puts down the phone and prays briefly, “Please give me a kind heart toward Marge. Please, Lord, help me to see her as you do, and please give me a new frame to put her in!” With that short prayer, she returns the call.
An abrupt telephone greeting tells Fran she’s reached her. “Hi, Marge, sorry I missed your call, but everything’s coming along pretty good. We ought to be able to have this ready for you by 4:00 or so this afternoon if nothing unforeseen happens,” Fran explains, trying to sound cheerful and confident.
“You mean, you can’t have it before 4:00? What’s taking so long for such a simple report? You people drag your feet over there so you can bill more hours! I could have done it myself by now,” Marge yells back at Fran, and Fran’s heart starts beating a mile a minute.
“Remember, you asked for a new frame for Marge,” Jesus reminds her. “She’s still obnoxious,” Fran thinks to herself. “I can’t see any other frame for her.”
Jesus says to her, “Fran, anyone this angry has to be frightened.”
“Frightened? Marge? What would frighten her?” Fran thinks. “Maybe I should find out.”
Fran hears herself saying, “Marge, sounds like things are pretty hot over there; you must be under some tremendous pressure.”
“Fran, you don’t know the half of it! They’re trying to take my job away from me and give it to some young chic—save them a ton of money, I guess. They’re just looking for one excuse and I’m out of here. Yeah, it’s hot over here.” Marge pauses realizing she’s said much more than she intended to. “But that’s neither here nor there. I expect to hear from you no later than 4:00.” And with that the conversation ends.
Fran now has a new frame for Marge: Frightened. She works frantically to complete the job on time, and a little after 3:30 she has it done. “Whew, we made it, Lord,” Fran says to Jesus, as she calls Marge. The same abrupt greeting comes as Marge answers the phone, and Fran tells her she has the report ready to e-mail to her.
“How many pages is it?” Marge asks.
“It’s about 12 pages,” Fran replies.
“Took you all this time to do 12 pages?” Marge replies with sarcasm.
Everything in Fran wants to strike back at Marge. She killed herself to get this report ready and Marge can’t even say thank you. She opens her mouth to voice some of her frustration, but she hears Jesus say, “Remember Marge’s new frame: Frightened.”
And suddenly Fran can see Marge in this new frame, with fear all over her face. So, instead of venting her anger, Fran says, “I agree, Marge, as hard as I’ve worked seems to me like it ought to be about 100 pages. But I wanted to make sure there were no errors and that everything was laid out very clearly. If you have to present this to your management, you don’t need a silly error making you look bad, I figured.”
The phone is quiet for a few seconds, and finally Marge says, in a quieter manner, “Well, that’s true. At least you kept your promise and got it to me by 4:00. Send it to me right away, and uh, thanks, Fran,” and with that she abruptly hangs up.
“Thanks, Fran! Did you hear that, Lord? She has never before thanked me for anything,” Fran says in amazement as she hangs up the phone. “I guess new frames can help—even with difficult people!”
Fran thinks about that conversation. “I didn’t say anything to her about being frightened, but I guess the fact that I saw her as frightened rather than obnoxious changed the way I responded to her, and that changed the way she responded to me. Interesting; very interesting,” she thinks with a grin.
The next day starts nicely for Fran, thinking that she put the latest fire out with Marge and now it’s back to her normal routine. But about 11:00 Marge calls again and with the same obnoxious tone of voice she says, “Did you really think that report was a finished product, Fran? When I presented it this morning, they asked me a ton of questions I couldn’t answer. It was a half-way job,” and with some further unkind and unrepeatable words, Marge tore Fran’s work apart.
Fran’s heart sank like a rock; she knew she had given Marge exactly what she asked for, but now Marge was blaming her for her own omissions and mistakes. Yet how could she defend herself to Marge?
She starts to say something, but Jesus reminds her, “Keep your words as few as possible right now.” Often Jesus has taught her that when she’s upset, the best thing to do is keep her mouth shut!
So, she mostly listens to Marge who gives her an addendum to the assignment and demands it be ready this afternoon. After she hangs up, Fran says to Jesus, “Lord, I thought we had this problem solved yesterday. I thought Marge was changing the way she treats me. She’s back to obnoxious again.”
Jesus reminds her again: “Put her back in the frightened frame, Fran. She is more frightened now than ever. And like a cat caught in the corner, she’s striking out at anyone she can. Obviously, she knows you can’t strike back because she’s a customer.”
After some quiet thought, Fran realizes this problem is not going to be solved easily. Marge may never change her ways. But Fran can be victorious in this situation if she keeps re-framing Marge and sees her the way God does. That won’t be easy, but it will be a lot easier than getting upset and angry every time she has to deal with Marge. “Thank goodness I’ve got you, Lord,” Fran says. “I’d never be able to handle Marge without you.”
Who is it in your life right now that you just simply do not like? They may be very unlikable people, but you can learn to see them through God’s eyes and ask God to help you re-frame them and see something positive about them or see behind their behavior so you can understand them better. Why don’t you stop where you are right now and pray for that person? It will start to make a real difference in how you relate to him or her.